hich it seemed better not to put
into words. "Well, it beats all," he mused aloud. "Why, man, there's
gold in those mountains! You had an inside track on prospecting, placed
as you were. And there's cocoa--and some day they'll coin money in
rubber, too. All that country's waiting for is better communications.
And you were on the spot, and knew all the lay of the land--and yet here
you are back in England, getting so much a month for messing about in
the mud."

He saw swiftly that his reflections had carried him beyond his earlier
limit, and with rapidity decided upon frankness. "No, I wasn't in the
Governor's outfit at all. I was looking for gold then--with occasionally
an eye on rubber. I stopped at your place. Don't you remember me? My
name's Thorpe. I had a beard then. Why, man, you and one of your niggers
were with me three or four days once, up on the ridge beyond the Burnt
Hills--why, you remember, the nigger was from San Domingo, and he was
forever bragging about the San Domingo peppers, and saying those on the
mainland hadn't enough strength to make a baby wrinkle his nose, and you
found a pepper coming through the swamp, and you tipped me the wink,
and you handed that pepper to the nigger, and it damned near killed him.
Hell! You must remember that!"

"That would have been the Chavica pertusum," said Gafferson,
thoughtfully. He seemed to rouse himself to an interest in the story
itself with some difficulty. "Yes--I remember it," he admitted, finally.
"I shouldn't have known you though. I'm the worst in the world about
remembering people. It seems to be growing on me. I notice that when I
go up to London to the shows, I don't remember the men that I had the
longest talks with the time before. Once you get wrapped up in your
flowers, you've got no room in your head for anything else--that's the
way of it."

Thorpe considered him with a ruminating eye. "So this is the sort of
thing you really like, eh? You'd rather be doing this, eh? than making
your pile in logwood and mahogany out there, or floating a gold mine?"
Gafferson answered quite simply: "I wasn't the kind to ever make a pile.
I got led into going out there when I was a youngster, and there didn't
seem to be any good in trying to get back, but I wasn't making more than
a bare living when you were there, and after that I didn't even do that
much. It took me a good many years to find out what my real fancy was. I
hated my hotel and my store, but I was c